Venerable Theophilus the Confessor

Theophilus the Confessor was an eighth-century monk of Mount Selenteia who suffered for his open defense of the holy icons during the first period of Byzantine iconoclasm, under the Emperor Leo the Isaurian (reigned 717-741). For confessing that the icons of Christ and the saints are rightly venerated, he was publicly flogged; because he endured this suffering for the faith without dying a martyr's death, the Church honors him as a confessor. He is commemorated on October 2.

By tradition Theophilus came from the region around Tiberias in the Holy Land. The synaxarion relates that at the age of thirteen he secretly left his home for the monastery on Mount Selenteia, where he was formed under the elder Saint Stephen and, after three years of ascetic training, was tonsured a monk. His parents, who had opposed his vocation, are said to have later persuaded the abbot to let him help found a new monastery, where he lived as an ascetic for many years before the iconoclast persecution overtook him.

The sources for Theophilus's life are intertwined with those of another iconoclast-era confessor of the same name associated with Strumica (Tiberiopolis), who is sometimes styled 'the Bulgarian' and commemorated on October 10; several accounts conflate the two. The present commemoration follows the Greek (GOARCH) reckoning, which keeps this Palestinian monk of Mount Selenteia on October 2 and treats him as distinct from the Bulgarian Theophilus.